Another illustrated project….

I was fortunate to fall into another book project this summer. A friend whose job concerns assessing risk and who is also a mountaineer, became interested in the death of mountaineer Kate Matrosova in 2015. She was fit, had mountaineering experience, and was appropriately equipped, yet died of exposure in an attempted February traverse of the Presidential range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

My friend, Ty, wanted to use what we know about Kate’s last climb in a presentation as an analogy to look at how all of us asses risk and make decisions. The presentation was so successful that he asked me if he could hire me to illustrate parts of Kate’s narrative to make the visual parts of the presentation more accessible. The illustrations were challenging. Finding the balance between wanting accurately show what we know about her journey, while maintaining a level of respect for her and her family meant that each illustration caused me to ask myself; okay, how am I going to do this one?

The success of the presentation led to the writing of a book; Where You’ll Find Me, Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova.

The book required more illustrations as well as maps, which were again a different kind of challenge since the goal for the maps was not just to show on a map where things were but to also give a sense of the kind of terrain to the reader who might not be familiar with the White Mountains, or mountaineering. I enjoyed the project and have been delighted at how well the book has been received.

In illustration from the book.

If you know someone who hikes or enjoys mountaineering, this might well be a book that they would be interested in.

Where have I been?

My loyal readers (both of you) may have been wondering what happened to this blog, since I have not posted much in the last year. The truth is I have been writing a lot, but just not on this site.

A lot of my time during the last two years (perhaps too much of my time) has been devoted to bringing out a new book.

Lasting Friendships, a Century of Friendship Sloops has been in the pipeline since November of 2012. It has been produced and Published by the Friendship Sloop Society, and I have been spearheading the project.

Part of the reason that I agreed to head the group that was putting this book together (aside from a love of Friendship sloops and their history) was an opportunity to work with Ralph W. Stanley.

Ralph has been recognized as a master boatbuilder and is an NEA National Heritage Fellow, but he is also an excellent writer and historian. Without his help the book project would have been much less interesting the finished book much less impressive.

The book also allowed me to meet and briefly work with Maynard Bray, who wrote the introduction for the book. Maynard has a long history with WoodenBoat Magazine and with Mystic Seaport. He is also one of the key figures between Off Center Harbor, a video website and collection of blog posts from some of the more influential sailors, writers, and boatbuilders from this part of the world.

When I took on this project, I did not realize how confused some of our own records at the Friendship Sloop Society were, nor did I fully appreciate how entwined the history of these sloops is with the local history of small towns up and down the Maine coast. We had terrific and generous help from Ben Fuller and Kevin Johnson at the Penobscot Marine Museum. Frankly, without their help I am not sure we would have ever untangled the origins of certain photographs. But we also had help from librarians, town historians, and many members of the Friendship Sloop Society. Without their help this book would not have been possible.

I am very relieved to have this project off my desk and am looking forward to getting some of my life back, and I might even have some time to devote to this blog too.

The book is available in soft cover from Amazon, and in hardcover exclusively from the Friendship Sloop Society.

 

 

Summer Reading

If you are looking for a good read this summer, I can recommend an excellent memoir:  the RIME of the ANCIENT UNDERWITER (Hobblebush Books, 2012) is sailor Jim Salmon’s account of his 19 month circumnavigation aboard the barque Picton Castle.

Jim Salmon worked as an insurance underwriter for years before a family crisis created an opportunity for him to retire early and go to sea and fulfill a dream to to sail around the world. I have read more of my share of “how-I-sailed-the-world” tales, and was not prepared for such a refreshingly balanced take on an old theme. Jim does not waste much of the reader’s time with describing personality squabbles and the “he-said-she-said” nonsense that has become all too typical of books about expeditions. Instead Jim paints his shipmates from a respectful distance, adding color to the tale but allowing the reader to focus on the places visited and life aboard the ship. In fact, in many ways the barque Picton Castle is the real main character of the book.

The RIME of the ANCIENT UNDERWRITER  is a delightful combination of travel-log, memoir, and description of life aboard a traditional  square-rigged ship. If you are looking for a great summer read, look no further.

Ship’s Boats

I have been giving a lot of thought to building another tender for our friendship sloop. The fiberglass dinghy has certainly earned it’s keep over the last nine seasons, and we won’t be getting rid of it, but at the same time, it would be great to have a tender that was larger and could be sailed. To that end, I have been pouring over small boat designs. Books like Fifty Wooden Boats, or How to build a Glued Lap-strake Boat, and issues of the Small Boat Journal, litter the cottage where the ship’s wolf and I share winter space with the two tortoiseshell cats that own the place.

I could now launch in to the pros and cons of various different designs and building methods, in fact whole web logs and forums are dedicated to this kind of merit assessment. The real problem, however, and the reason that, until now, I have not decided what to build is that I want to build all of them.

This sorting and comparing of designs has been going on quite literally for years. But I think we are getting close to a final decision. There are four things that I have decided as of now, they are; that first the boat must have classic lines and look traditional, and second that it not add significant amounts of yearly maintenance to my already long list, third it must be larger than our current dinghy, and fourth that it be sail powered as well as oar powered. Add to these prerequisites the requirement that whatever I build must be able to manage landings on the “beaches” in Maine, New Hampshire, and New Brunswick, and we are leaning further and further towards glued-lap-stake-plywood construction.

I continue to read books and forums and just about every design review that comes out, but as I say I think we are getting close and I may be clearing the floor of the shop soon…

New Children’s Book

There has been a lot going on here of late, enough so that I have not been able to contribute to this site in a while. Coming soon: some photographs and notes on the Ukuleles that were described in the last post, and some updates on the boat page, but for now; let me plug a new children’s book. Cat In the Clouds.

                This is the fifth book I have illustrated and the second children’s book. The book is about Nin, a lost cat who finds a home at the Mt Washington observatory, on the summit of Mt Washington. Nin is a real cat, he lived on the summit for twelve years, and the book’s author, Eric Pinder knows Nin well.  Nin is quite a local celebrity, so much so that when he retired from the summit, the news made CNN!

               I like the challenges presented by illustration work. I like trying to create images that catch the eye but that do not necessarily give away what is in the text. I also like trying to find a style that compliments the writing. Cat in the Clouds is, essentially, a true story, so I tried to make the watercolors true to the setting, while keeping the focus on Nin. This presented a constant balancing act between those images that were more panoramic and those that were more about Nin.

                I have worked, and do work, in a number of mediums. Watercolor has become one of my favorites. I like the spontaneity and the immediacy of watercolor, but I also like the challenges. For example, unless you are just trying to get beautiful big splotches of color (and some painters just want that) it is an extremely difficult medium to master. I think part of the reason for this is that there is a continual tension for the painter between a well thought out approach to a subject, knowing what areas to leave light and where to apply darker colors to the composition, and an ability to take advantage of those moments when the combination of paint paper and water does something unexpected. Another way to look at this is that if you just want to be surprised, watercolor is easy. If you are actually trying to achieve a specific look, it is much harder.

Front piece from the book

Illustration from page 11

In case you were wondering each watercolor took on average four hours.

            So now you know what happened to at least one month of my winter. The book is available here through Amazon.com, or you can go direct to the Publisher, The History Press.

“New House Rules”

I have been sanding the bottom of the boat, pumping basements, and repairing stuff damaged by the weight of this winter’s record snows. I did want to take a moment to recommend another blog that might be of interest to anyone who is either about to build a home or is considering building a home.
          Friend Tedd Benson, of Bensonwood Homes, has set up a blog site called New House Rules. It is really worth checking out. Tedd wrote the introduction for our tree house book Treehouse Chronicles, and at the time gave us a fantastic tour of the Bensonwood facility in southern New Hampshire. I was deeply impressed by the commitment to efficiency and to sustainability. Check it out. New House Rules

Virtual cruising

It is February, or as we used to refer to it when I was teaching secondary school: “the F month”. When I am not shoveling snow, I do get a chance to get out into the backcountry on my skis from time to time. However, my thoughts have already begun to wander to next sailing season. I have started to drag rigging into the shop for overhauling, and I have already indulged in an activity that I refer to as Virtual cruising.
          Virtual cruising can take several forms. Sometimes I just read last season’s logbooks looking for trips to repeat. Sometimes virtual cruising is about researching places that you have never been, and dreaming about going there. I keep an old tattered chart-book and several editions of cruising guides in my bedroom. I read more about places to visit in the winter than I do in the summer. With any luck, I am too busy actually cruising to research cruising in the summer months.

          Sometimes virtual cruising takes the form of a navigational exercise: “If I depart Rockland with a true south wind, can I lay Greens Island in one tack? If my average speed is five knots, how long will the trip take? What kind of approach can I expect if I want to pass north of the island”?
          Several resources worth mentioning to anyone cruising Maine waters: A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast by Hank and Jan Taft and Curtis Rindlaub is the guide that I have found to be the most comprehensive (a new edition is supposed to come out this spring).
          As you might expect, no one guidebook will cover everything, and small boat sailors would be wise to join the Maine Island Trail Association (MITA). MITA members get an annual guidebook with detailed information about islands that are part of the trail system, anchorages, and which islands welcome visitors. It also includes information such as islands that might be closed part of the year due to birds nesting, and privately owned islands that welcome visitors under certain conditions, or at certain times of the year. The guide has changed over the years, formerly it focused on the needs of paddle driven craft, recently, more useful information for small boat sailors has been included.
          Another worthwhile resource is a column called Gunkholing with Gizmo by Ben Ellison that appears in the Magazine Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors. I have a three ring binder that I put copies of this column in, sort of a separate cruising guide.
          Yet another useful resource is the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. I became a member because of the number of times we stopped at some beautiful spot, and found a discrete sign stating that the island in question was in the care of the MCHT.
          So this morning, when I went downstairs and looked out the window and saw this:

And yes that is snow, I thought I might try to wrestle the chart book away from the cats tonight and go on a virtual cruise.
             

Winter Reading

Some good friends from Alaska recently sent me a great addition to my library. A book and video tape called Qayaqs and Canoes, Native ways of Knowing .  Anyone who appreciates baidarkas, umiaks, or native Alaskan handcraft will appreciate this book. Really a series of essays, and observations based on interviews with eight native boat builders, their apprentices and supporters, the book is the direct result of a project called Qayaqs and Canoes; paddling into the millennium. Filled with evocative photographs of some magnificent artwork, and due to the format based on interviews, you can pick the book up and start reading almost anywhere.
           It reminded me of another wonderful book in my collection Our Boots, An Inuit Woman’s Art. Again, like Qayaqs and Canoes, magnificently illustrated with museum quality photographs, interviews and examples from premier Inuit makers of mukluks.
           And while on the topic of books, let me take a moment to plug fellow blogger Gavin Atkin’s new book; Utrasimple Boatbuilding, available like the other two books here on Amazon. This looks like a perfect book for the beginning boat builder. You can read more of Gavin’s work at intheboatshed.

Boat owner’s manual completed

I wrote a post earlier in the year about how much work I had put into an owner’s manual for own friendship sloop (see owner’s manual post). Well I have neglected to mention that I got the thing done last spring.
             While it ended up being a labor of love, it did allow me to learn an updated version of publishing software for work, and the project had come to a point where so much of the real work was done that I just went ahead and finished it.
             The resulting manual is seventy pages long divided in chapters or sections that include; Safety, Systems, Stowage, Operations, Rigging, Sail Evolutions, and an Appendix. I used a three ring binder format so that as we make changes we can reprint and replace just the affected pages.
             Just for giggles, here are four more sample pages.

 

New Maine Coast Resource

In other posts on this site, I have sung the praises of my favorite magazine, Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors. If you are interested in keeping up with what is going on in coastal Maine, the magazine has just started an online version. Great photographs of beautiful boats, a “launchings” feature, architecture, art, and reviews as well as a great calendar feature, are all part of this site. If you are like me, and could look at pictures of beautiful boats all day, check out the featured photographer Jamie Bloomquist, you won’t be disappointed.
Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors -on line